


A Wretched Life

by Tyellas



Series: History is hard to know [6]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, Immortan Joe's Greatest Hits, Implied Cannibalism, Philosophy, Post-Apocalyptic, Slice of Life, Slit gets one line, Squick warning: maggots!, The History Woman is missed, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dust of the Wretched, between the pageantry of the Citadel and the grim wisdom of History, a young woman strives for survival and a little bit more. Another Wretched seeks to unpick the Immortan's motivations, including his salute to Imperator Furiosa and the war party that follows soon after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wretched Life

Rabbit woke with the cold dawn. It was Wasteland midwinter, which was good: the day would have less sun to endure.  She unballed herself and sat up to scan the sky.

The star cluster of the Pleadies clung to the northern horizon. When the History Woman lived with Rabbit's people, for a time, she had taught Rabbit about the stars. Rabbit half-remembered the Pleiades story: they were sister stars, fleeing across the sky.  The only Pleiade she could remember the name of was Merope – the smallest, weakest one. The one that was like herself, one of the most Wretched at the base of the Citadel.

The Pleiades had shone twice since the Citadel had snatched the History Woman. Her tribesman, the History Man remained Wretched. Together, the History People had seemed to know everything in the world, and the History Woman - Sophia Giddy - had let Rabbit be her shadow. On his own now, the History Man was cantankerous, prone to rants and long strange silences, yet prodigally generous with his lifetime of knowing and wordburgers. Rabbit decided she would see him that day. She checked the pockets of the worn anorak that sheltered her from the elements, then ran her treasured half-comb through her hair. Next, she dug up her water bottle from the sand. Rabbit had slept on top of it. She allowed herself three swallows of aqua-cola. This was relief for her dry cleft palate, and for her gums, exposed by her snarling cleft lip. Nothing else about her modest, dusty appearance mattered. A slight ache remained in the middle of her head. Still, she was ready to start the day.

Full dawn unscrolled with vivid colors. Dark blue rippled away to red and orange across the sky. Beauty and fear made Rabbit catch her breath, press a hand to her heart. It was too vivid. Her headache took on new meaning. One of the vast toxic storms might sweep through, later…

A good day to earn some protein.

The Citadel’s base was cloaked with scree and fallen stones. Rabbit chose an attractive rock with some marbling. She had several uses for it. It was the largest she could hold in her right hand, and she let her overlong sleeve conceal it. Then, she took off towards the heart of the Wretched encampment.

Like many other Wretched, she had chosen to doss down on the ground outside of the Citadel towers. The space between the towers was where the Wretched in tribes and factions gathered day and night. Most of the solitaries hived in during the day. Tribed or alone, your status could change in an instant, twisted by good luck or bad.

The sun rose, and most of the world's colors faded, subsumed in the eternal red-ochre dust of the Citadel's base. Rabbit could see some green if she leaned and looked up. To reach her goal before other hopefuls, Rabbit risked passing by the camp of the Lepers gang. This fierce faction, every member somehow afflicted, dominated the valuable, ever-shady gap between the War Tower and the Seige Tower. She tried to go quickly, but calmly. Wordburgers garnered through four years of hearing History People rattled through her head: _disease vectors, overcrowding, post-nuclear, mutated pathogens, stress-induced cannibalism._

Rabbit realized that someone was keeping pace with her. Two someones. Three. They were Lepers, barely, freshly afflicted and young, picking on someone their own size. There was a tap on her arm. “Hey. Hey!” Rabbit glanced, and her eyes widened. She and the girl who had just tapped her had run together when they were very young, half their age in oldyears now. Each was sixteen-seventeen by that count. The other girl had seemed luckier at the time. Now, pale flowers of disease spread across her skin, marring her face. As Rabbit registered this, she was tackled. Wretched fights started for any reason, to steal gear or kill boredom, to gain face or rip your face off. They rolled together hard in the dust. The other girl wound up on top.

She laughed and called out to her fellow Lepers, “Told you I’d get one!” Then, she inhaled phlegm, getting ready to spit. Before she could launch the gobbet, Rabbit swayed up and clouted her, backhanded, with the hidden stone. The other girl gaped and reeled to one side, keening with surprised pain. Rabbit skittered out, backed away. None of the others interfered. Just as Rabbit turned to run, herself, the other girl shrieked, “Cuntface! Beggar filth! I’ll name you to Meltdown! You’ll _wish_ you were maggot food!”

The name of the Lepers’ terrifying leader set sparks in Rabbit’s heels. There’d been other moments when the Lepers made it clear they were expecting her to come around. This time, with the personal twist, stuck in her gut.

Another of the History Woman’s wordburgers starred her memory. This one, she remembered every day. _Whenever they catch you they will kill you…but first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner…_

By the time Rabbit reached the largest Wretched maggot farm, she had composed herself. Sheets of flies glittered richly in the sun, their creamy offspring turning human offal into maggot protein. This was the Fleshmaster’s work, and his daughter and helpmeet were both considered well-fed beauties.

Rabbit was the first to come begging to mind the Fleshmaster’s daughter that day. “You know me. She knows me. Today there'th a good chanthe of a ssstorm,” she said. Rabbit’s speech was lisped by her cleft, but she could often manage an _s_ if it came at the start of an important word.

“Storm? Youse sure, eh?” Rabbit nodded. The helpmeet had a whole face and a whole skin, hair that carried dreadlocks well, wire jewelry, expensive scarification, a long tattered skirt. They surveyed Rabbit approvingly. “Give me the snarl? Good. Ugly and healthy. You’se got her.” Rabbit thought of her grapple with a Leper earlier, and said nothing. She had to live. “Take her to the smarts. Teach her somethin’. She’ll be for the Immortan!” The child was draped like a small walking tent to protect her prettiness from the ruthless sun. Everyone anticipated her destiny as a bride of the Immortan, most of all the child herself.

The helpmeet locked one end of a thin, rusty chain to Rabbit’s left wrist, and the other to the child’s right wrist. Then, they doled out a generous half-handful of maggots to Rabbit. It was understood that there’d be more when she returned with her charge to be unlocked. Rabbit said, “Thank you,” crushed her wriggling handful until it went still, and turned aside to lick it up.

The helpmeet gave the child a shake. “See, that’s what youse do with maggots for breakfast!”

The pampered girl pouted. “I wanted long pig.”

The helpmeet gave the child a shove towards Rabbit. “Take her. I got things to do.”

Rabbit envied her having constant work. She half-knelt to the helpmeet, then she and the child went off together. “Today we’ll do a ssscienthe with the History Man. Then we’ll play what you like.”

The child had never heard anyone but Rabbit speak the word. “I don’t want to do a ssscienthe! It’s boring!”

Rabbit knew how to persuade her. “At the lookout. You’ll thee the Immortan.” Then she had to run to keep up with the child, as if she was being pulled along by a kite. Rabbit had seen a few kites when she was younger. The Immortan had caught onto them quickly and banned them for the Wretched, along with guns, roofed structures that lasted more than a night, and hitching rides.

They passed by the Treadmill drop. The Treadmill was descending just right for Rabbit to see the guards, draped in fearsome black, armed with pikes and scythes. She pointed up with her chained arm. “Which guard do you like? I like the left one,” said Rabbit, admiringly.

The child declared, “I only love the Immortan!”

The History Man could reliably be found at the lookout every day, at a certain hour. Rabbit saw his tattered umbrella first, wordburger paper scraps adorning it. The wordburger tattoos that covered his baldness were half-obscured by dust. At his feet, he had used a sticklike scrap to set up a little sundial. He was yarning away with legless watchman Stebbins, who perched in his sun shelter. The History Man turned to Rabbit and said, “Wordburger: young padawan. Where’ve you been? I was worried.”

For those who remembered the History Woman, there was protection in the History Man’s shadow: he did Tells and tattoos for the Wretched’s other large mob, the Mongrels. But he was one of the oldest men in the world _. I tried a few days on my own to see how I’d do when you’re dead_ weren’t words Rabbit wanted to say. Instead, she held out her rock.  “I found thith. Archaean granithe?”

“How excellent of you to remember. See these white streaks in it? They’re quartz intrusions.” The History Woman had named the pleasure to be found in moments like this. _Knowledge is mastery. To know something well is to be a person. And to be a person is rare in this place._

Theiving Taf joined them to do a science, too. The younger boy stuck his tongue out at Rabbit. She flashed him a brief, snarling smile, but edged her charge away from him. Knowledge and personhood aside, his ringworm was getting worse.

Stebbins surveyed the trio. “Yer Wasteland kids are skiving off, Alan, if these are the only ones to show.”

“They’re probably the ones who’ve eaten today. I can help with water, but not that.” She and Taf curled away from each other in mutual embarrassment. Such an old person’s mistake. Mentioning food was nigh-taboo, unless you were doing an immediate trade.  If you said something like that to the wrong person, you might get eaten yourself. 

The History Man abruptly decided to quiz them. “What’s the season? Which quarter of the day is it? What time by the sundial? Name three types of rock in the Citadel’s formations. How many days has it been since the Fall? What's the Before-time date today?” The child got excited, wanting Rabbit to win, and then bored as it got more complicated.

As they talked, Wretched crowds shifted and shuffled. The Citadel’s Treadmill drop was coming to life. First, the lift swayed down with a black, bannered truck cab, surrounded by fearsome War Boys, one lean Imperator flourishing a steering wheel. The lift returned for more vehicles.

Most of the Wretched began to chant the Immortan’s name. The child did, but the adults young and old on the lookout fell quiet, despite the crackle of a tannoy system, sending a command echoing from the stones. “REV IT UP FOR THE IMMORTAN JOE!”

The Immortan was a pale gleam in the Skullmouth, and his voice rang deep and raw. “Once again, we send off my War Rig to bring back guzzoline from Gastown and bullets from the Bullet Farm! Once again, I salute my Imperator Furiosa! And I salute my half-life War boys who will ride with me eternal on the highways of Valhalla! I…AM…YOUR…REDEEMER. IT IS BY MY HAND THAT YOU WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES OF THIS WORLD!”

Rabbit felt the pull of the chanting, but the History Man snorted. “Phoning it in, Joe! A welcome back to the raiding Imperator and not much more. What she must have done to be back in favour… “ He shook his head, then nudged Stebbins. “Not half as good as ‘We Will Shred This Cult of Pretenders’ before the road war last year. That was an epic rant. A full hour.”

Stebbins chuckled, “My fave is still ‘The Wasteland Has Taken My Son.’ That was a good’n. ” The men both laughed.

The sound system rasped, “DO NOT MY FRIENDS BECOME ADDICTED TO WATER….”

The History Man talked over the rest. “And here…we…go. I want a seconds count of the water drop, you two. Then average it, and we’ll estimate how much water we’ve got.”

The Immortan sent the water down. The new and the crazed and the rankless were the ones who clustered around the waterfall. Most of the water soaked into the ground. It could be dug for, later, by those who had the energy, and the approval of the Mongrels. Taf would just steal it off someone. Beside Rabbit, the child was calm, too: the Fleshmaster always had water.

Rabbit and Taf counted up the seconds separately, and agreed on an average length. The History Man declared, “Thirty-three seconds. So based on a hundred and thirty liters per second we’ve received four thousand liters. A one-day drop. Not good.”

Stebbins asked, “Think he’s trying for a slaughter? For us to cull ourselves?”

“Usually he sets that up for when he’ll be on the road. Joe’s been close to home. None of the Triumverate coming in. No war parties going out,” said History.

The child asked, “When’s the Immortan going to marry me?”

“Probably another two oldyears at this rate,” History said, dry and regretful.

The child turned to Rabbit. “How many days is that?”

“Theven hundredth.”

The child flopped into the dust. “Nooo! That’s forever!”

“It’ll go by quickly, never you fear…too quickly.” The History Man held his tattered umbrella out over the young woman and the child.

Revived by being the centre of attention, the child jumped up. “Rabbit, draw me a picture of when I get married and the Immortan gives me a name.”

After the dust of the convoy settled, the day remained hazed. Taf wandered off. Rabbit drew in the sand for the girl, planning where they’d take refuge later. Her morning headache was intensifying in the sides of her skull: more proof of a storm coming. 

The main Wretched populace remained milling around the two drop areas for the water and the Treadmill. A few walked by with gossip. A woman with a well-known name, Desperate, had been taken up as a milker by the right Treadmill guard. Rabbit sighed, wistfully. Of course it would be Des. Such a thing would never happen to her …but it was nice to know it happened to somebody.

After her leper altercation, the twist of fear still in her gut, Rabbit lingered around the two watchers. She was glad she had something to offer in return for the minor shelter. She asked the History Man, “Did you sssee the dawn?”

“I did. Feel like a storm to you?” Rabbit nodded. The History Man looked upwards. “I trust those Eustachian tubes of yours. The top of the posh tower is pretty lively. They’ve got the heliography going. Perhaps they’ve got a clue themselves, this once. What do your young eyes see?”

Rabbit shielded her eyes to peer up. “They’ve sent up flareth.”

“Oh, no,” muttered the History Man.

“Aw yeah,” said Stebbins.

Soon, fevered drumming hammered the air again. “War party alert!” Stebbins whooped. “It’s on!”  He whistled and swung his legless body up to the lookout height on his hands, to yell, “Bets! Plaaaaace yer bets!”

The History Man said, bitterly, “Set up for when he’s on the road. The next few days will be bloody.” Rabbit nodded, wondering how to stay one step ahead of it all.

More cries rang from the stone as the Wretched flowed away from the center of the Citadel’s inner grounds. Tribal clusters in the crowd shattered. To get out of range of a war party, it was every man, woman, and chosen-gendered person for themselves.

Then! The Citadel weighed down the Treadmill in a dark, stately flood. Rabbit shivered to witness it. There was the Doof Wagon and its crimson jester-herald, blasting the day with music; the ferocious pursuit vehicles; the great Gigahorse itself. This was terror. This was glory. The dark Gigahorse rolled with banners black and red, pale figures lurking dimly inside. The host of vehicles held back to let it take the lead. As it rolled past, the child Rabbit watched screamed, “Immortan! Immortan!” She would have run under its wheels if not for Rabbit digging in her heels, the chain jerking her arm.

As Rabbit pulled herself up to the child, at the edge of the road, she caught her breath. The silver Bigfoot thrummed past, splendid Rictus standing in the back. His skin shone, his massive armament of steel and brass gleamed in the sun. Rabbit folded a hand over her heart, as she had for the dawn.

She looked back to the History Man. “They’re going out into the thtorm! Ssshould we tell them?”

He came up to join them. “I stopped trying to get them to listen to me long ago. They’d only just begun to listen, in the Before-time – when the crisis we’d created came down on us.”

Rabbit, used to his digressions, edited this down to _no_. With a weary pang, she asked, “If they won’t lithen, why do we get water? Why are we here?”

“Sophia would be proud of you, asking the difficult questions.” The unexpected praise, paired with the History Woman’s name, stabbed Rabbit with pleasure and sadness.

The History Man went on. “Wordburger: Humanity. Ours and the Immortan’s. He’s a tyrant, a terror, and one of the last few humanists left…all at the same time. That means he believes what I do: that people can make a difference. The catch is that it has to be his way. With the line between god and man blurred on his behalf, and us Wretched his resource, like the aquifer. We’ve just Witnessed the hordes who go along with him. Unfortunately for the rest of us.” Rabbit’s arm clanked: her charge was straining at the shared chain again. To the nameless child, History said, “Step back a bit there, love.”

Suddenly, the child screamed. A fierce steel car, the last off the Treadmill, diverged to swipe by them. Rabbit jerked the child close just in time. She barely glimpsed the front lancer. She’d never forget the driver’s manic grin, then the cruel, slash-faced leer of the back lancer. He feinted at them with a thunderstick, yelling, “Savages!”

With a revving roar, they sped away. Rabbit was left in their dust, in her usual wretched state. Painfully wary, chained by need, waiting for the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> Wordburger: _Whenever they catch you…_ An abbreviation of a classic line from the rabbit-based novel Watership Down.
> 
>  _You know me, she knows me_ \- Both girls appear in the very first scene of another fic of mine, [Weave a Circle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4229832/chapters/9566877), featuring Miss Giddy/The History Woman.
> 
>  _Heliography_ \- The old military signal system that uses mirrors and the sun. Is it just me or is this used in Fury Road between Gastown and the Citadel?
> 
> Title from this quote, strangely apt for this story: "“We often have to explain to young people why study is useful. It’s pointless telling them that it’s for the sake of knowledge, if they don’t care about knowledge. Nor is there any point in telling them that an educated person gets through life better than an ignoramus, because they can always point to some genius who, from their standpoint, _leads a wretched life._ And so the only answer is that the exercise of knowledge creates relationships, continuity, and emotional attachments. It introduces us to parents other than our biological ones. It allows us to live longer, because we don’t just remember our own life but also those of others...” Umberto Eco.


End file.
